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Friday, 17 January 2014

Helm - The Hollow Organ (PAN)

Bill Kouligas' PAN label hurtle into 2014 with their 50th release in the form of Helm's The Hollow Organ, thus signalling Bill's intention to continue ruling the world of electronic music from his Berlin control tower. So towers open fire!

Hold on though, this is not some tub-thumping rallying cry or blast of beats that will waken those still dead to PAN's mission. No. It's 25mins of thoroughly unpleasant electronic noise...and I love it, not because it's Noisy, but because it represents an artist in full control having picked his tools and set about covering the canvas. This is abstract art at its finest, and although certain tones set the mood, the (post)-impression(istic) power, whilst obvious, is not easy to define. Impasto fashion, Luke Younger layers molten metal on swathes of iron filings pasted to glistening steel. He does.

The opener, Carrier, is initially beat-driven, but that momentum subsides about halfway through, like a fuel rocket being ejected into space. After that, we're drifting through a cloud of alien transmission. Analogues, you can hear below, so I'll say nothing other than it absolutely maintains the strength of this EP, as does Spiteful Jester. There's no let up on the title track, where you spend 10mins inside a Gothic mega-structure made to manufacture nightmares that will erase your head. Magnificent.